Ninjago Rebooting
by Parachutingkitten
Summary: Zane and Pixal wake up after a very twisted version of season 3 plays out with no memory of who they are or what has happened. (Annihilation Memory AU)


The first thing I noticed was the cold.

It was this painful, icy, sharp, _unnatural_… cold.

As I began to move I noticed how sore my body was. I could feel injuries on my torso, arms, knees, and a very sharp pain in my chest. There was glass on the ground, surrounding all sides of my body, clinking together as I slowly sat up. It took me an extra moment to get reoriented in my surroundings, as they weren't familiar to me. In fact, the room seemed to be quite literally turned on its side, the few pieces of furniture in the room bunched into one corner, and the carpet sat, not beneath me, but on the wall in front of me, adjacent to the door, which now hung sideways. As my eyes became adjusted to the dim light I became acutely aware of the room's shallow light source: a dim blue glow emanating a few dozen feet away from me. I focused on it, blinking a few times as I was able to make out what it was.

A body.

I instinctively shot up, making my way over to the collapsed figure, fighting against the strange incline the room presented, and the glass still littering the floor around us. I knelt down next to him, examining his body. He looked human, but there was a large cavity open in his chest filled with wires and metal. In the center sat the source of the blue glow. It was a strange pulsing ring of metal- but it was distorted. It seemed as if it had been forcefully and rather violently torn in two, leaving only one half of the ring in his chest, with jagged and uneven edges, sitting unaligned in it's cavity. I looked up at his face, biting my lip. Things certainly didn't look good for him. I shook him a few times, trying to get a response.

"Sir? Sir, are you okay?"

Nothing.

I turned back to his strange broken ring of light. It was noticeably shifted from the cavity that held the ring's shape. I reached my hand forward, closer to the glow, hesitating a bit. I didn't want to hurt him. I gently pushed the piece back into the slot in his chest.

A locking mechanism clicked into place as his body suddenly jolted to life, a desperate breath entering his system, as he began struggling to sit up.

"Sir, are you okay?" I placed my hand behind his shoulder, assisting him as he rose.

There was panic in his eyes, his breaths only continuing to quicken. His body shook, trembling as he looked frantically around the room.

"Where are we? What's happening?" His eyes finally landed on me, settling for a moment. "Who are you?"

"Well, I don't know what happened, but I'm…" My mount hung open for a moment, trying to find my name… but I couldn't. What was my name? For the first time since I'd woken up, I looked down at myself. My skin was pale white, some strange circuitry patterns painted across my arms.

I was a droid.

_But who though?_

I looked up at the man. "Who are _you_?"

He too looked down at himself, discovering the mess of wires that surrounded his strange glowing core.

"I'm not sure," he sighed, his fingers still visibly trembling. He looked back up at me, calming down a bit.

"Are you going to be okay? You seem pretty shaken."

He nodded. "Yeah, I think I'm alright."

"Can you stand?"

"I think so."

I stood up, offering him my hand as I pulled him up, careful of the glass shards falling off his figure.

"Well… we can figure this out, right?" I turned, walking around the room. "Judging by the temperature, we're in the middle of a pretty severe winter storm. But there's no way the storm could have done this to the building," I gestured at the walls around us. "This has to be the result of some sort of large scale attack. It looks like an office building?"

"Borg Industries?" The man offered from behind me. I turned around to see him holding a pen in his hands, squinting at it. "That ring any bells?" He glanced up at me.

I thought for a moment. Borg Industries? "Not really," I sighed.

"Well, we're both droids." He moved closer to the door, observing it carefully. "This glass was obviously the result of some sort of confrontation outside of the room-"

"Because there's no windows in here." I finished. "You think we knew each other?"

He thought for a moment, turning around. "Well, we're the only two people in this room, but our designs are noticeably different. It could go either way."

"Well, something is obviously wrong with your… core?" I gestured to his chest. "You could have been the reason for the attack," I offered moving back over to him. "It looks like whoever took the other half of it wasn't exactly delicate about removing it," I bent over, getting another look at his strange unnamed piece.

"It's possible," He shrugged. "I just wish I knew what it was."

"It's so strange." Something about it drew me to touch it. I glanced up at him. "Is it okay if I…"

"Go ahead," he shrugged.

I turned back to the piece, first circling it with my finger. "It certainly looks important." I gently placed my finger against the edge of the piece, his body jolting back and crumpling as he yelled out in pain.

"I'm so sorry!" I knelt down to him placing a hand on his shoulder. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah," he breathed out. "I guess in hindsight that was kind of a bad idea to begin with." He smiled at me.

"You sure you're going to be okay?" I asked, guilt still sweeping through me.

"It's fading pretty quickly," he reassured me.

I offered him my hand as we stood up again. "Is there some way we could cover it up so we don't touch it by accident again?" I asked.

"Maybe. There might be some sort of a switch or something."

We both began studying his chest again, looking through the various controls.

"Close panel!" I announced once I found it. I carefully pressed it, the coverings sliding out to neatly enclose the space.

"Well, that's one thing fixed," he sighed.

As I stood back and looked at him, something struck me as familiar. I could feel my eyes go wide as I made my realization.

"I _do_ know you!" I grabbed his hands. "I know you! I must have known you!"

"What do you mean?" He asked, confused.

"I have your blueprints in my memory bank! I've scanned you before!"

"You think you can access them?"

"Hold on for just a second."

I let go of him, closing my eyes, and concentrating on the file, trying to locate his name. When I opened my eyes again, they projected the blueprint onto the wall- an ability I was not aware I had.

We both stared at the blueprints, his name stretching over the top.

"Zane Julien," he whispered, walking towards the image.

"It says here that your strange glowing core piece is your _power source_," I observed. He seemed preoccupied with something else though.

"Ninja of Ice," He read, brushing the words as he read them. "What do you think that means?" He turned back to me.

"I wish I could tell you," I sighed, blinking as the projection cut off.

"Zane," he whispered to himself again. "Zane… I like it," He smiled, walking back towards me. "I'm _Zane_."

"Well, it's very nice to meet you Zane," I smiled, and curtsied, both of us chuckling a bit.

Our smiles faded as our surroundings seemed to catch up to us.

I felt _cold_ again.

"Well, should we try and get out of here?" I turned to look at the door, Zane following my gaze.

He approached the disoriented frame, his fingers grazing over the door handle.

"You ready for this?"

He looked back at me as I moved forward to meet him.

"Whenever you are."

His hand gripped down, slowly turning the knob and guiding the door down as a dense breeze blew in. And as my eyes adjusted to the light, I caught sight of what was on the other side.

Piles and piles of deactivated droids.


End file.
